Hiding History Behind Politics

History isn't just an informational subject, it's also very much about critical media literacy.  Trying to get a clear view of history through what's left to us is nearly impossible because human beings will immediately want to spin it for their own benefit.  These prejudices come from the people at the time, the people who decided what survives and the people in charge now.  This propagandist approach has a great deal of power when applied to the study of national history because it produces dangerous byproducts, like patriotism based on national myths that systemically exclude whole swaths of our society.

This is the cover of Flashback Canada, the history book they handed me to teach a grade 8 class during my teaching practicum in Peel in 2003.  I wasn't a Canadian citizen when this piece of propaganda was handed to me and I was told, as an agent of the system, to indoctrinate the class (most of whom were also new Canadians) with this violently untrue rendition of Canadian Federation.

I can't find the full illustration from inside the book (it's a two page spread!) but I recall it had indigenous groups in traditional garb, unaccompanied women and many BIPOC characters fictionally back-written into the narrative of a multi-cultural Canadian history that never happened.  Teaching this "we've always been multi-cultural" myth of Canada made me very uncomfortable so instead of teaching the text I found some other historical images of Confederation done close to the time and then the students and I looked at the differences between the textbook's rendition and other historical documents.  As you might have guessed, Canadian Confederation in 1867 was a lot of white dudes (because they were the only people considered as people under the law - no one else could vote or politically mattered):

How did this play with a lively, very multi-cultural class of grade 8s in 2003?  Code-switching wasn't a common term back then but many of the BIPOC students talked about how stuff like this makes them doubt their own experiences with racism in Canada.  This made my older, white Canadian supervising teacher uncomfortable.  These days I'm sure she would be on board with the current 'woke' white settler types who want to make make a lot of noise in this moment that will quickly fade to leave us with our lousy status quo again.  Dwelling in the discomfort by prompting discussion and then making systemic change as a result is a way to move beyond our reflexive need to retain a status quo built on lies.

I've talked about historical prejudice before on Dusty World but the events currently happening in Canada are bubbling it all to the surface again, though I don't understand why anyone is so surprised by them.  These children disappeared in plain sight and reports of the nastiness of religious residential schools aren't new.  Choosing to be surprised by them now feels like political spin.  Part of that latest push is to cancel Canada Day but this politically divisive move only shames anyone who disagrees while amplifying the voices of those who want to leverage this disaster for their own political ends.

I've heard (smart, historically aware) people advocate for cancelling Canada Day because aboriginal families are mourning the recent discovery of thousands of children's graves from the Canadian religious residential school genocide, but the only people reeling from this 'discovery' are politicized left-wing Canadians who have now decided to (loudly) acknowledge this hiding-in-plain-sight colonial history.  I doubt native families are 'stunned' by these 'findings' as they've been living them for generations.  This 'white surprise' must seem disingenuous.

I'm left wondering if children's history text books are still as multi-culturally white-washed as that one I was handed in 2003.  My approach to that lesson caused friction with my (white, established-settler Canadian) teacher-mentor.  Teaching rote curriculum out of prejudiced texts works much like taking down statues and cancelling holidays: it's an effective way to revise historical fact to suit the current political narrative which is itself a nasty piece of work.

In the next two centuries the selfish decisions made by current generations around rampant overpopulation, wasteful consumption of resources and pollution of our limited ecosystem will make any previous genocides look tame, yet we're quick to burn anything historical that doesn't meet our myopic ethics.  That well-travelled, carbon spewing first-worlders who hop into their 4x4 SUVs wearing sweatshop made clothing are so loudly self righteous is another example of temporal prejudice, but then you don't see a lot of humility or self-awareness in history.

It's easy to criticize previous generations without making any attempt to contextualize their decisions in the time that they were made.  This temporal prejudice is every bit as corrosive as racial or gender prejudice.  Mass consumers waving social justice flags while making decisions that will kill billions in the future are just as blind to their own contextual short-comings.  Wouldn't it be something if everyone tried to overcome the pomp and circumstance of history with humility, honesty and fairness?

Cancelling holidays  that are guaranteed for you but not for others at the rough end of the socio-economic spectrum reeks of privilege, while taking down statues and renaming things is more about rewriting history to make it less uncomfortable than it is about making any genuine systemic change.  What we should be doing is legally deconstructing confederation and taking the colonial prejudices out of Canada's political structure.  First past the post British electoral systems prop up old prejudices and should be dismantled but won't because party 'representatives' that could make the changes won't because the status quo is what handed them power.

The nastiness of Canadian colonial history isn't easy to stomach but throwing a cancellation blanket over it isn't going to solve anything; we need to dwell in this discomfort if it's ever to prompt real systemic change.  Politically driven divisive ideas like cancelling national holidays and renaming everything to make it less offensive is more likely to support the status quo than change it.  We'll never overcome historically prejudiced propaganda by spinning more of it.  Real change has to happen at the legal level or we'll just keep spinning lies to maintain this poisonous politically charged status quo.

FOLLOWUP

This is still on my mind weeks later as I watch people struggling with how to approach this new awareness.  As a 'new' Canadian I'm finding the loudest white voices in this come from the most established (privileged) white Canadians who are struggling with family histories that are interwoven with Canada's vicious colonial history.

Stats Canada has some interesting breakdowns of Canada's immigration history.  What has me thinking about this from an alternate perspective is that Canada isn't just a colony.  For the vast majority of Canadians today Canada is the place that took them in when their own homes wouldn't or couldn't.  To present modern Canada as just a colony is divisive and untrue, it's so much more than that for the vast majority of its population which includes people of creeds and cultures from all over the planet.

For a poignant realization on modern Canada's place in the world you should make a point of going to Pier 21 in Halifax.  Only a tiny percentage of the people who live here came with expansion of empire in mind, though that isn't how media (social or otherwise) seems to be dealing with it.  For the people dealing with some murky family history I sympathize, but your Canada isn't my Canada.

When we came back from Japan in 2000 we attended an international festival on Toronto's waterfront.  After years living in one of the most mono-cultural societies in the world this burst of international expression was very moving.  As I stood there on the edge of Lake Ontario watching Brazilians express their own culture freely and beautifully in their adopted country that is increasingly built on an international cultural mosaic, I teared up.  That's perhaps the greatest strength modern Canada has:  it shows the way to a future where we can all live together.  Embarrassed descendants of colonist Canadians shouldn't be able to dictate the narrative of this latest chapter in Canada becoming a more perfect version of itself - they've been doing that for too long as it is.

Even though I'm from England I find Canada's adherence to old British habits (first past the post, how our constitution ignores founding cultures) incredibly frustrating.  The most Canadian thing we could do is, as I suggested previously, crack open the British North America Act one last time and create a modern Canadian constitution that is the most radically inclusive charter of rights on the planet.  First Nations people should have the same legal leverage that Quebec has.  With that leverage you'd never see another 'Indian Affairs' ministry - you'd see First Nations doing what Quebec has done:  leveraging the constitution to ensure equity under the law.

RESOURCES

https://blogs.umass.edu/linguist/secret-path-residential-schools-reconciliation/

"Come learn about indigenous people’s history that you probably weren’t taught in school..."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/first-nations-right-to-vote-granted-50-years-ago-1.899354

First nations Canadians didn't get the vote until 1960!  Canada's concept of representative democracy has always been flawed and yet it's treated as sacred - which is how you ensure that status quo continues.  These days the old white guys in charge casually dismiss the Charter of Rights whenever it suits them.

https://www.cbc.ca/kidscbc2/the-feed/why-it-took-so-long-for-women-to-get-to-vote-in-canada

"...in September 1917, the Wartime Elections Act was passed in Canada. It granted the vote to women in the military and women who had male relatives fighting in World War I, but it also stripped away voting rights from many Canadians who immigrated from ‘enemy’ countries."

https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/chinese-canadians-get-the-vote-in-1947

Asian Canadians didn't get to vote in Canada until after WW2!

https://humanrights.ca/story/the-chaotic-story-of-the-right-to-vote-in-canada

"The story of the right to vote in Canada is the story of a centuries‐long struggle to extend democratic rights to all citizens. It’s a chaotic tale that includes rebellions and riots, as well as protests, and visits to the Supreme Court of Canada."

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/confederation

"Indigenous peoples were not invited to or represented at the Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences. This despite the fact they had established what they believed to be bilateral (nation-to-nation) relationships and commitments with the Crown through historic treaties. (See also: Treaties with Indigenous Peoples in Canada; Royal Proclamation of 1763.) The Fathers of Confederation, however, held dismissive, paternalistic views of Indigenous peoples. As a result, Canada’s first peoples were excluded from formal discussions about unifying the country." 

You won't find anyone on the Canadian Encyclopedia page who isn't an old white dude because they are the ones that confederated Canada, specifically while denying anyone who wasn't from their background any participation.  Re-writing history to ignore what actually happened isn't a great way of learning from those mistakes.

Temporal Prejudices

Recently a friend on Facebook shared this Washington Post article about Winston Churchill. I tend to shy away from hero worship, it isn't really in me to do, but I am motivated to try and address one of our last blind spots when it comes to prejudice.

I've seen people time and again criticize those who lived before them as being immoral and somehow answerable to the laughable ethics of our own time. That article on Churchill, a man who lived at the end of the British Empire and spent much of his career trying to hold the tattered pieces of it together, often using the same kind of bombastic rhetoric you still see today, is no doubt accurate, but the re-defining of statements made over a century ago based on modern values is neither fair nor particularly useful, unless you're a politician trying to win a point.

There is a real danger in interpreting historical people from a modern perspective. We are all creatures of our time - it dictates our thinking more than our culture, language or economic status does. To criticize someone for a lack of understanding at a time when it didn't exist is itself a kind of prejudice. A fairer way to judge them would be to consider if they helped move us toward the clarity of thought we think we enjoy today.

This first became obvious to me when a history professor told us the story of his father coming back to university as a retiree. The man was well into his eighties and he thought it would be fun to take early Twentieth Century history since he'd lived through it. He quickly became so despondent with the course that he dropped it. The young students in the class ripped into what they called the rampant racism of the time. He tried to explain to them that racism wasn't rampant, it was how society functioned back then, but they didn't want to hear it. It's hard to understand his point unless you're aware of just how blinkered you are in your own time. Most people are happily ignorant of these prejudices.

Everyone, as they get older, must experience this strange kind of temporal emigration. We all move away from the values we grew up in. I suspect it's one of the things that wears out seniors the most, society moves on without you. Newer people change the rules and things change (hopefully for the better, but there is certainly no guarantee of that). I imagine most aging people feel like the world has become a foreign place to them.

Based on the myths Western society is founded on, you'd assume that this is a case of continual improvement with us becoming the shining zenith of civilization, but human history suggests otherwise. We have moments of rationality that become eclipsed by our own darker nature. When that happens you'd better hope there is a Winston Churchill to fend of the Nazis of the world. There are racist imperialists and there are racist imperialists - had the other guy won the definition of racist imperialist would have ascended to new heights. Starving people in India to feed soldiers during a war is a very different thing to active genocide.

There are a number of points made in that article that, while true, ignore the circumstances they were made in. Dresden fire bombings are described as an unmitigated act of terror. In retrospect the Allies won World War 2, but this was by no means a certain outcome. In an all-out war with both sides intent on the complete subjugation of the other, the Allied firebombings not only severely affected the German war machine's means of production, but it also struck fear into an enemy drunk on its own sense of superiority. You don't win wars by pulling punches. Was Churchill an imperialist? No doubt, and he shared the racist views of his culture and time period, but to rewrite history to suit your own values without recognizing that cultural influence is itself a kind of prejudice.

We go to great lengths to acknowledge history these days, and I think that's an admirable thing, but we are still blind to so many influences. The recent Oscar ceremony was doing back-flips to acknowledge the rampant racism and sexism implicit in the business, but then proceeded to give a standing ovation to an American soldier who proudly stated that he went to a country half way around the world (Vietnam) to kill the people there for not capitulating with his government. Imperialism is alive and well and we dress up celebrities in fancy dress to give it standing ovations and world wide TV coverage. I wonder what the people of Vietnam thought of that magical Oscar moment. Perhaps all we've done in our post-colonial world is hide it behind rhetoric and politics better than we did in the past.

There is something to be said for the clarify of purpose and honesty with which people used to go about the business of empire. At least back then you knew what people stood for. In Canada this looked like outright oppression, religious indoctrination in residential schools and overt colonization. Today all that is hidden behind a quiet racism and just enough prosaic government support to make the people its supposed to be helping helpless. In 150 years it might be said that all we've gotten better at is management. While all that's going on we're removing John A. MacDonald from that embarrassing historical record. At this rate we'll have history scrubbed clean with our revisionism in no time. Don't worry though - the racism and cultural inequalities will stay safe and warm under that revisionist blanket.

We often sit up here in the 21st Century criticizing the shortsightedness of the people before us. I wonder what our descendants, looking at us sitting on our high horses while appearing blissfully ignorant about our hypocrisy, will say about us.

We're burning a hole in the world with fossil fuels, industrial farming the earth into a desert to feed a never ending population explosion, wearing clothes made by third world workers in economic slavery (itself based on the remnants of colonialism), creating the worst economic disparity in human history and proudly supporting martial force when it suits us, which usually means when we need what they have. They only difference between imperialism a century ago and imperialism now is the marketing we put on it. We used to be honest about our imperialist intentions, now we tell everyone we're exporting freedom.

We're all blind to the things our time period is unwilling or unable to address. This is as true for Churchill as it is for Mr Tharoor. A good dose of humility is what we need here, not more rhetoric by a politician. A bit more awareness of circumstance and compassion for historical circumstance might also translate into a less judgmental view of our own elderly. Trying to understand someone from a different culture is something we say we value. Recognizing that people from other time periods are essentially from a different culture as well might make us a bit more aware of our own hypocrisy.

The Sky is Falling!

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

...and the counterpoint: Ignore The Bullshit: iPhones Are Not Destroying Teenagers

Is this another panicky article by The Atlantic about how digital technology is killing us?  (Remember is Google Making Us Stupid?  I do.)

The general complaint is that youngsters tangled up in emerging technology won't have the same beatific childhood we have all nostalgically invented for ourselves.

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing at the best of times.  It's a fictional invention by its very nature.  Our own childhoods weren't magical bliss.  Depending on how old you are, that magical family trip you took when you were a child was done in a gas guzzling, emissions belching nightmare of a 1970s car.  We're all suffering from the results of your magical childhood road trips.  This isn't to say that those trips weren't wonderful, but they are hardly the placed on a pedestal, this is the way we should all be all the time ideas that nostalgia amplifies them into.

The distance between generations is very similar socially to the distance between races and cultures.  Especially with our rapidly evolving technology, one generation to the next might have significantly different lived experiences.  Just as racists like to emphasize differences in culture and patriots like to wave their flags over the perceived superiority of their countries, ageists like to belittle generations other than their own for their differences.  Sometimes that ageism turns into something worse.

This week in Canada the elementary teachers union in Ontario created a debate about the country's first prime minister, John A. MacDonald.  This discussion squared off people who tend toward staunch nationalism with people who tend toward staunch political correctness.  It reminded me of a story one of my history professors once told us about his dad.

In his late eighties this professor's father thought it would be nice to begin attending university classes.  The prof was delighted at the idea and encouraged his dad to give it a go.  In the first semester this elderly gentleman found himself in a class full of twenty somethings learning about the early Twentieth Century - something he had first hand knowledge of.  As they learned about suffrage (both gender and race) the ever-so-proud of their place in history young people in this class began throwing around words like sexist and racist.  The prof's dad was very upset by this.  He tried to explain that the vast majority of people at the time weren't consciously racist or sexist, but were becoming aware of how things had to change.

This is a huge realization that I think most people seem incapable of.  Our place in history is perhaps our largest single prejudice.  Those twenty-somethings in university in the 1990s were throwing around these judgments from a temporal place of perceived superiority, but I wonder how history will represent them.  Can you sit there wearing clothes made in sweatshops and burn fossil fuel to get to class and really feel that superior?  Can you live in a country that only exists as a result of aggressive colonialism and cast disparagements at the people who did the dirty work of creating it?  They could.

This feels like a people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones kind of thing, but it's human nature to grasp for and exploit any perceived superiority it can; political correctness is founded on the idea.  Humility and honesty are hard work.

When I was doing teacher's college I came across a grade 8 history text book that had a painting of the day of Confederation on Parliament Hill in 1867.  In this picture that I'd describe as more propaganda than anything else, were black, Asian and native people all walking hand in hand with white Canadians and all dressed in appropriate Victorian dress.  None of the women and most of the men in that picture couldn't vote and had nothing to do with Confederation.  If they weren't dying from smallpox they might have been building a railway or were recent refugees from the underground railroad who were now experiencing the quieter racism of British North America.  If you want a final victory for colonialism this was it - a children's history text that had rewritten history to make Canada look like something it never was (but would eventually evolve towards).  Burning books and rewriting history has a long and dark history.

Canada has a messy history.  Less messy than The States, but messy still.  Revising it isn't a way of fixing that, it's a way of hiding it, which isn't cool.  Any schools named J.A.M. should remain so - talking about history remembering the context of the time is why the study of history is so challenging, but it's something we should do or we're doomed to repeat it; I suspect we are anyway if we're not willing to ask the hard questions and fix the social inadequacies we currently exploit.  It's a good thing people in the early Twentieth Century were willing to fight for equality of access to democracy, because I'm not sure people today would.

There is little difference between George Washington owning slaves and a 21st Century North American buying sweatshop clothes from Walmart.  In fact, I'd say the only difference is that Washington did his own slave owning rather than farming the work out to multinationals.  The modern 'First World' has never paid for what things actually cost.  We can afford fossil fuels to power our massive vehicles and fly across the world because we

 stand atop centuries of colonialist policy that hasn't disappeared, it's just hiding in what we now call globalized economics.  We've never paid even a tiny percentage of what burning fossil fuels or manufacturing goods actually cost.  A future generations tax is an obvious choice we'll never make because screw our descendants, we'll get ours.  Isn't this just another kind of generationalism?

Judging newer generations who are struggling with technology change just as we all are is equally prejudicial.  Other than teens being able to publish their self involved drama, I'm not sure much has changed other than the ability to publish it, so panicking over the end of civilization because of smartphones seems a bit bombastic, but I'm sure it'll sell magazines.  When that generational prejudice begins to deny the existence of previous generations it's not going to help us fix any of our current blinds spots, of which there are many.  Future generations are going to look at us as a disaster, even as we're busy assigning blame to the people who came before us.

Jill Lapore